Just Like That
by Jessa L'Rynn
Summary: ...Time's in flux. Your cozy little world could be rewritten, just like that... A rewrite of The Unquiet Dead for the Time in Flux Ficathon.
1. Part 1 The Doctor

**AUCTION SPECTACULAR - GET YOUR OWN AUTHOR!! Two chances to own your own piece of the randomness that is Jessa L'Rynn. Support Stacie Author Auction coming up September 11th-14th! Bid early and bid often - details on my LJ, link from my profile. Others up for sale as well and remember - Buy Whovian!!**

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Written for the **Time in Flux Ficathon** over on LJ. The goal was to take an assigned episode and rewrite it for a successful romance. I got "The Unquiet Dead". I did it as a two parter, but both parts can work as separate fics. First time posting on FFnet.

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**Just Like That**

_Part 1 - The Doctor_

Sometime between sending Rose off to the wardrobe room to change and deciding whether he ought to change himself, it hits the Doctor like a speeding locomotive, exactly what it is that's going on here. He, the Last of the Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds, is dating a shop-girl from 21st century London.

A simple human girl.

She's not just a shop-girl, of course, not anymore, not even if she ever was. There's something about her, something unusual and unique, something that's made it impossible for him, even up to this point, to treat her like a regular companion. Hell, he couldn't even call her a companion when he was asked - or led, anyway - into supposedly defining their relationship. He let her storm off in a culture-shocked, offended huff rather than put the limit of "we travel together" on who they were to each other.

He's dating a girl.

It hits him again, and two time lines stand before him. People who don't walk in eternity don't see it and probably can't understand. It's not the enormous, multi-faceted, infinite-option decisions that shine and glow and spawn Universes. It's the little ones, like this one, where two simple choices are all there is, that make whole realities dance to their tunes. It's a time like this, turning right or left, saying yes or no, standing still or running, this is the part where ordinary people take entire fates of creation into their hands.

He is a Time Lord.

He's never actually had this sort of choice, before, not that anyone would believe it. He makes decisions every day and people and planets live and die by them. It would seem to a mortal, outside observer that the kinds of things he does encompass the entire futures of whole star systems. But to him they aren't choices. They're repairs or, to keep more accurate with his chosen title, surgeries he supposes. They're things that have to be done by someone, and so he does them, either because there's no one else, or because the others who could will not. He picks the paths of reality but he is always, inevitably, following a pattern long set down, correcting a snarl in a tapestry that encompasses all of time, to make sure the picture comes out correctly in the end. He can choose the methods and the outcome to some extent, but in the end, his decisions are made based on what has to be and what cannot.

This time, though, the choice is his alone and genuine.

He can keep to his old ways, the harder path and yet the easier one. He can keep her close but at arms' length, watch her dance through his life from the side-lines. He sees a very familiar place blowing up around them, sees laughter and horror and running without stopping. He sees her collect pretty boys and watch him with questioning eyes. He sees her negative answer to a ubiquitous question, sees her father die, sees himself choose time and again to save her when he can, sees her break everything to do the same. He sees her, in the end, weeping into a leather jacket, balled up and broken while he stands, a stranger, at her side. And still she remains, and with him, though he turns then to push her away, to shove her aside before she chains his hearts and he destroys her. She won't be pushed, but he won't pull, and so they orbit and it breaks him anyway. Then he is the one weeping into a jacket, but there's no one by his side, and it kills him a little or, in one possibility, all at once. If he chooses this reality, to keep to a Time Lord's ways, there are ends, after all, many options, many chances, to join his doomed and damned race.

Until this moment, he'd have said he wanted that more than anything.

He can follow her ways, instead. First date with chips and the sharing of secrets, and that would make this their second date. This time line is more complex and hazy, as if it's got only the barest finger hold on reality. It overlaps the other in places, events that are inescapable, but there are different paths through even those. This time line has so many choices, so many chances to go wrong that he can't see if either of them will come out the other side. What scares him more is that he can't even see if it has an other side. In more than one aspect, it looks like they live in this future forever. Sometimes, he sees endings, sees her with a torch over his pyre, sees him jettison her body into the corona of Trihedron, to keep her with his most precious stars forever. He sees children and it terrifies him. They have his eyes, and her smile. The Time Lords would call them abominations, more for their father than their mother. Yet he cannot find it in him to call them anything less than fantastic.

It changes him and everything, but the Universe will come out the same.

The easiest thing, the safest thing, would be to stick to his nature, to follow what he has been taught. It may seem difficult on the surface, to resist her mortal beauty, to never consider her an object of desire, but he is not human and does not have to allow himself to be subjected to the devices of longing. By the same token, he cannot treat her as a father figure would for the simple fact that he has already acknowledged to himself that she is a beautiful and desirable female. That does not mean he cannot play mentor to her youthful enthusiasm. It is a comfortable role, and he can wear it along with the leather jacket and the lunatic grin, because it should fit in the same way, with the ease of familiarity. She will be close to him, she will learn to use that fantastically potent mind of hers, she will find in him someone who respects her for herself. He can try to convince himself that she is a companion, someone there to learn from him and spend time occupying his time until she finds her place in the universe without him.

It's not like he can't love her anyway.

The other option would be so much more complicated. He will have to go back to school, be the student rather than the teacher, learn the human mating rituals that he has watched with amusement bordering on condescension in the past. It can always go painfully wrong, this, because there are things in his past, and possibly things in his future, that are almost too horrible to contemplate. He has told her his world died in War, but hasn't explained that he is the one who turned the key, their ultimate eventuality, their first strike capability and suicide solution. Even if she can accept that he put his world to death to save the Universe, could she accept that it was hardly the first time he executed entire species, that, despite his best intentions, it is unlikely to be the last?

Could anyone truly love an unrepentant murderer?

Beyond that, he is old and she is young, though neither of them really are that in their species' reckoning. Time Lords his age are still very young for a species that can live millennia, whereas humans her age are already making career decisions and choosing their own paths. Nevertheless, she has never been allowed to choose her own path before, and he was running his planet in his own right long before he ever decided to burn it down before the Universe burned down around them. He's old though, in that he's grown tired of his life and tired of the Universe. He's old because he's survived Ragnarok, and no one's meant to do that. And she's young, too young, because she is an innocent to the evils of the world, too gentle and too pure to subject to the shadows inside him.

He's a storm that rages eternally, and she's only a summer shower in comparison.

Human women want men who will stay in one place, who will love them above everything (or at least claim to do), who will share everything from beds to meals to morning rituals with them. He doesn't sleep unless forced, eats on the run given a choice, and his morning ritual consists of a razor blade to the rather overactive beard he's acquired in this regeneration and making sure he doesn't smell enough to annoy himself. He might be able to love her above everything else, but he won't be able to let her life outweigh the needs of the many. He doesn't know how, not anymore, not even if he ever did. He'll endanger her just by existing with her, because things follow him, and the TARDIS is drawn to trouble, and he can trip over a cataclysm more readily than she can trip over a cobble stone. She'll probably die of loving him, if he lets her.

But she's human, so she'll die, anyway.

She might already love him too much, if her beautifully poetic justification of his lifestyle is any sort of indicator. He can't understand that, but it's obvious to him in this non-moment, the vision of Rose making her choice, time and again, to be with him, to stay with him, to take whatever scraps of love and affection he offers her and cherish them like treasure. It's almost wrong to choose the safer path, almost looks to him like they'll hurt each other time and time again if he doesn't make it clear to her that he won't accept what she offers, or that he will. He could never reject what she is or gives - he's too broken for that and he knows it. She'll give him smiles and laughter and hugs and joy and he'll take every ounce of it, as needy and desperate as an orphaned child without a home.

Anything she offers, he'll want, but there's only one way he'll be able to have it all.

The safer path promises death, quick and tragic and painful, and he's all for it, has been since he set fire to time itself. The other path, this path that's not merely hand-in-hand, but also heart-to-hearts, promises life. There's pain in either choice. She'll make him sad and make him angry in either path. She'll make him smile in either time-line, make him laugh, make him remember who the Doctor is, make him learn, ever so slowly, to forgive himself. In either path, she'll make him hers. But in only one of them, she'll make him happy.

He doesn't believe he deserves to be happy.

He watches the two timelines shift places until she comes into the console room, until his own voice disrupts the ebb and flow. "Blimey," he says, and both lines come into sharp relief. Her words are a tease and a worry at once, and he can sense anxiety and decisions hanging in the air around them. "You look beautiful," he admits, and his choice is already half made for him by his own impulsiveness. The second timeline, the more difficult one, the one he doesn't really think he deserves, starts to pulse and glow and take over everything that's coming.

She starts, slowly, to really smile.

"Considering," he adds, and there's a lurch, and her smile starts to fade like the glowing time-line with the potential forever in it. He wants that smile, has already started to fall so hard for that smile. The Doctor pauses, one more hearts-beat, before everything becomes irrevocable. He can give in to the fact that his species is gone and there's no one to judge him, and he can do everything in his not inconsiderable power to win the heart of a simple human girl. Or he can stay as changeless as he is ageless, go down the path that's only holding her hand and, if all he's seen is really true, lose his hearts to her anyway.

It's a true choice, this one, where, like any mortal man, he can decide.

He stands up from his work and lays the sonic screwdriver aside. "Well, you were already beautiful," he says. The Doctor takes Rose's hand and the entirety of eternity shifts sideways.

"What was that?" Rose asks, looking as stunned as if she actually felt what he did.

"White flag," he replies with a smile, and leans forward to kiss her cheek. She accepts it with a grin that's quickly becoming his favorite sight in any Universe. "Ready for our second date?"

Rose nods without hesitation and he takes her arm to lead her to the doors.

"Just one thing," he adds. "This time's not like yours, yeah? So you're not allowed to go smackin' my bum again while we're here." He grins down at her for the sheer joy of watching her blush that lovely shade. He's got no idea how she could possibly imagine he missed that little stunt. Then, those bright brown eyes start to sparkle pure mischief.

"What about when we're not?"

He looks into those eyes, lost and so lost, knowing full well that he may never find his way clear, and he can't help it, he just can't. She's so beautiful and so special, so fantastic, that it comes up to him and pounces on him just as hard and as fast as his locomotive-like earlier realization. She's got perfect, saucy lips, and they really need to be kissed. So he does, and almost manages to keep it chaste enough, at least chaste enough that his handkerchief can get most of her lippie off him without much trouble. Grinning, because he's already starting to see that promised happiness and can't believe how insanely fantastic it is after all, he holds her close with their foreheads touching and lets his answer breathe across her kiss-damp smile.

"As you wish."


	2. Part 2 Rose

**AUCTION SPECTACULAR - GET YOUR OWN AUTHOR!! Two chances to own your own piece of the randomness that is Jessa L'Rynn. Support Stacie Author Auction is happening NOW September 11th-14th! Bid early and bid often - details on my LJ, link from my profile. Others up for sale as well and remember - Buy Whovian!!**

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**Just Like That**

_Part 2 - Rose_

Sometime between "Good smile, great bum," and "I love a happy medium," it hits Rose like a spaceship crash-landing on her head, exactly what it is that's going on here. She, Rose Tyler, a shop girl from 21st century London, Jackie's daughter, the hitch-hiking time traveler, is falling for the Doctor.

An alien from outer space.

He's not just an alien, of course, not to her, not even if she ever saw him that way in the first place. There's something about him, something familiar and comforting, something that's made it impossible for her, even up to this point, to treat him like the total stranger he probably really is. Hell, the one time she realized she didn't know him from Adam's Aunt Mary, she couldn't even hold onto her fear for five minutes in his presence. She knew she couldn't get home any other way, but she also knew a whole line of other alarming things by the time that conversation was over, and one of those things is starting to solidify, right now.

She's falling in love with an alien.

It hits her again, harder this time, and everything about it sprawls out before her like the sand from a broken hour glass. Maybe people who do special, real, important things don't see it, and can't understand. It might be huge decisions that change the world and make everything and everyone do one thing or another. Still, it's the tiny choices that make these big ones even happen in the first place. It's going with Shireen to see a band instead of going with Mickey to the pub, it's going out to pick up the vase yourself instead of sending your husband to do it, it's agreeing at break to turn in the lottery money once it's collected, instead of swearing you've got to be home in time to catch the match with your mates. That's where the world really changes.

She's just a shop girl.

Rose has never actually noticed this sort of decision before. In the past, she's just sort of let things happen to her, pretty much heading down a path that felt like inevitability even yesterday. She was going to be her mum when she grew up, just like her mum was her mum, and so on, and so on. Nothing new or different about it - the news said so, and her friends said so, and her teachers said so, and even her mum and Mickey said so. Everyone had a slot in the world, and hers was the same slot every smart girl born in her station in life occupied. She was too clever to just wind up single and preggers with some drunk guitar-player's unwanted sprog, but she wasn't educated enough to actually get out. Her attempts have been half-hearted and almost accidental, dating the guitar-player who was actually going somewhere (yeah, prison, but she'd never seen that coming), getting a job in a Regent's Street shop, instead of the chippie closest to her flat. Basically, a normal life was just sort of happening to her, and she was just sort of letting it.

This time, though, she can see quite clearly that she's got to make a decision.

She can just travel with the Doctor - be his friend or plus-one, or whatever the hell Time Lords call their tag-along sidekicks. When she's seen the Universe or bored the Doctor, whichever happens first, she can go back - right back - to that alley where she left Mickey, and back to her ordinary life. Put the man in the denim and leather behind her and get a job selling food of some sort, marry Mickey when her mum's carping becomes too much. Come home smelling of grease every night and watch the footie and maybe catch a snog during the commercials once in awhile. Maybe they can have two point four kids or something, if he ever gets around to turning off the telly long enough, if she's ever home from work long enough. Everything according to some grand plan that's not written up anywhere, a life that's exactly what it says on the tin.

According to everything she's ever known, she's supposed to want that.

She can tell very easily that the Doctor's used to running rough shod over everybody, just from the way he reacts to her challenging him. It doesn't occur to him that he doesn't know the first thing about these aliens in the Rift, except that they were hurt in his War. Rose, perhaps because she's the suspicious sort, having been dragged up on the Estate with lots of strangers with lots of candy, wonders if he even considers that just because the Gelth were caught in the cross-fire, it doesn't mean they were good guys. And even if they were, are they still? They want to inhabit dead bodies and that's cruel and creepy all at once. Time's in flux, he says, and everything changes. Maybe they're not nice anymore. She remembers the Nestene, quite clearly, thanks, and why it came to Earth. Maybe that makes her worse than him, the man who can stand judgment over the Last Human and watch her die.

Maybe that makes her his match.

It's not safe, living with the Doctor, but she knew that before the beginning. Even as he tries to gently persuade her to his way of thinking, even as Gwyneth says she wants to do what the Doctor wants, Rose is afraid it's wrong. She should have explained this to Gwyneth better - it's not that the girl is stupid, exactly. It's just that she's been sheltered and put upon at the same time, worked half to death and kept out of danger all at once. She believes in angels, Gwyneth does, and Rose honestly can't find it in her to make Gwyneth stop it. Even as the Doctor looks at both of them like they're delicate and strange and foreign little things, Rose can't help but wonder if she was ever half as innocent as Gwyneth. She wonders if she has even half the understanding of the Doctor. She wonders if it wouldn't be safer, easier, better, if she reminds herself that she's got nothing for him - she can't give him blind trust or child-like faith but can't give him a logical argument on equal footing either. She doesn't know if she's really suited for this life.

Somehow, though, it feels like what she's here for.

All her life, she's run away from giving anyone a chance to see the girl inside her. She's not told him, not yet, but the Doctor already knows her better than her mother and most of her friends, simply because the Doctor's smart enough to understand what she says. She's not sure if he wants a clever woman with him and it's tempting to go back to her blonde and pretty, easygoing disguise, but he looks at her while she sarcastically acknowledges creepy locations for creepiness. He's still annoyed with her for close-mindedness, and he still can't help the grin of true amusement. Happiness looks good on him and Rose begins to wonder if she can make him happy forever.

Can she love him enough to spend the rest of her life with him?

Rose knows that he still thinks she is quite young, while she can't tell from his actions his true age. Looking into his eyes, she sees very nearly eternal youth, and she also sees age that is completely beyond her understanding. Sometimes, he grins like a child, tossing out random ridiculous puns and going fanboy over Charles Dickens. She can't help but remember that man, even when he's towering and stern and informing her, point blank, that her whole reality can be rewritten with a wave of his hand. It's almost like this high-handed dictator act is just that, an act, to hide something far more fragile. She doesn't think it's the grinning lunatic - she's almost certain that's another part of the act. He's young and old and harsh and beautiful all at once, and Rose wonders if that isn't what he's trying to keep anyone from seeing.

A kaleidoscope of contradiction is at the very heart of him and she wants to see it all.

She's demanding a promise of the aliens and the Doctor's actually seen things her way, after all - just because they can use the corpses doesn't mean they can keep them. The Doctor's not cruel enough to allow that, to allow the Gelth to steal the faces, the very things that made these people who they were in life. Gwyneth walks fearless under the arch, and then it begins. For a few moments, it's so incredibly beautiful, all these aliens flying and glowing through the empty air, and Gwyneth shining in the light cast by her angels. For a moment Rose understands, sees beyond the mask. This is what he wants - life and miracles and moments of pure beauty. For the smallest filet of time, it's there and fully visible to her, the fundamental innocent at the heart of all that bluster and exaggeration. And then the Gelth explodes into darkness and the Doctor looks unutterably crushed.

"I think it's gone a little bit wrong," he says, and Rose wants to shield him like a child.

She might already love him too much, if the way his grief and anger washes through her is any sort of indicator. He determinedly keeps his body between hers and the infested corpses, but Rose honestly believes he's the one more in need of protection from this. She's begging him to tell her she can't die before she was born, and he's apologizing and locking them behind a conveniently barred grating. She looks into his eyes and absolves him. She means it, too; it isn't his fault. She wanted to travel and see the Universe. She wanted to do something different and better with her life, she didn't want to be just another London shop girl, just another Estate urchin grown up to become another Estate mum.

And he makes all of it worth it, even death a century before she was born.

His eyes are bright and so full of so much emotion as she tells him they'll go down fighting, as she promises they'll go down together. He holds her hand, holds her close, their lingering last goodbye nothing like in the romance movies. She's never seen a moment more true all the same. It's all there for her and he says it with a smile, a look so full of tenderness and truth that she knows the words are only part of it, only the beginning. He's giving her so much, offering her everything, and she's never wanted to live more in her life.

"I'm so glad I met you," is what he says.

But what he means is so much more. This is them, spending the rest of their lives together, right this minute. There's so much that could have been before them, kisses and quiet moments and running for their lives. She can sense that he fears rejection from her and from this, right now, even as their murderers are just outside the cage, clamoring for their heads. She smiles back at him and at last she knows her own heart, knows what all this really means to her, knows what he means to her and will continue to mean to her, even if by some miracle they survive after all. So she tells him.

"I love you, too, Doctor," she says, and reaches her free hand to touch his face.

Forget the zombies and the end of life as she knew it. Forget that there's a forever they could have had and probably never will. The feelings they share have been given a name and that name has been given a voice, and maybe that's all that really matters. The Doctor nods, innocent and earnest, and Rose is aching inside that she didn't get to be with him in every way she can see in his eyes, in her day dreams. She wonders if this was enough, just to say it and feel it and let it live, and then die in each others' arms like some kind of Shakespearean legend.

Charles Dickens brings a Christmas miracle and saves lovers from ghosts this time.

When the Doctor jumps free of the burning building, Rose's first thought is to drag him close and never let him go again. His first thought is apparently to apologize. She thinks he's the one who needs apologies for this. He wanted it so badly, to save the Gelth, to save Gwyneth, to make something better.

"She didn't make it," Rose says, and she's just as sorry for them as for Gwyneth.

They all lost their chance to save the girl who saved the world tonight. Rose feels guilty because she thinks she should have said something more, and she feels sorry because the Doctor thinks she blames him.

She can't blame him any more than she can blame Gwyneth - they both tried so hard.

They send a reborn Charles Dickens on his way and they're changing his world only long enough for him to find true joy in the end of his days. Rose knows, right now, exactly what that sort of thing is worth, and she's completely grateful.

She's been given the ultimate second chance, and every thing is like magic before her.

She looks up into the Doctor's hesitant smile and tugs him down to kiss him. His lips are so soft and so well shaped for kisses. He's had a lot of practice, too, because she's just getting into this thing and he's already reducing her to a quivering, whimpering, wanting mess. She knows there are lots and lots of things that will need to be done and said between them besides this, questions and answers and maybe a promise or two. There's a whole entire forever to map out between them. But today she's learned how very, very short life can be, whether you pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party or not. So she whispers across the Doctor's kiss damp smile the only thing that's really important in this moment.

"Help me out of this corset."


End file.
